UN Climate Panel Review Begins After Skeptics Flag Mistakes

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- A team of economists and scientists
began a review of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change after the Nobel-prize winning body was criticized
for errors on melting Himalayan glaciers and flooding.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, which oversees
climate science for the UN, told the 12 reviewers that his panel
had made errors and that he would do his best to implement their
recommendations. He was speaking at the opening session in
Amsterdam of the probe by the InterAcademy Council.

“We need to develop an ability and capacity to communicate
far more effectively to the outside world,” Pachauri said in
the proceedings, which were carried in an audio webcast. “We
will try and make this as fool-proof as is humanly possible.”

The panel, whose reports guide climate change policy and
treaty talks for governments around the world, has come under
fire from global warming skeptics for exaggerating data about
the speed glaciers are melting in the Himalayas and overstating
flood risks in the Netherlands.

The glacier and flooding errors were both flagged earlier
this year, more than two years after the IPCC published an
assessment report that said scientists are more than 90 percent
certain that humans are causing global warming.

Pachauri said working groups that prepare the reports
aren’t permanent bodies and are typically disbanded when their
chairperson steps down, a flaw in the system. When criticisms
arise, researchers who wrote relevant chapters must be tracked
down and questioned, he said.

Gone Fishing

“If you want to respond to anything that goes back to the
previous assessment, you have to go to the report authors and
the team,” Pachauri said. “The relevant scientist could be out
fishing.”

The last assessment carried out by the panel, published in
2007, examined more than 20,000 papers and reports on climate
change. The next one, due in September 2014, will probably have
to take into account 60,000 papers according to Pachauri.

“This is a gigantic task,” Pachauri said. “It’s going to
take scholarship. It’s going to take application of the highest
order.”

Pachauri also said his panel needs to continue to look at
studies by non-governmental organizations as well as peer-reviewed scientific papers. The mistaken paragraph on glaciers
in the most recent report was attributed to the environmental
group WWF. The so-called “grey literature” includes studies by
the International Energy Agency, the World Bank and the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, he said.

The InterAcademy Council review was announced on March 10
by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The dozen reviewers are led
by Harold Shapiro, an economist and professor emeritus of
Princeton University. They come from Canada, Brazil, South
Africa, the U.K., Japan, the U.S., China, India, the
Netherlands, Mexico, Germany and Malaysia.

The panel is scheduled to submit its findings to the UN by
the end of August.